Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

Entries from What's Wrong with the World tagged with 'apologetics'

Repeatedly I remind those interested in the New Testament and in issues of historicity that there is a crucial distinction between an author's simply being non-specific about chronological order and his changing the chronology in his account so that it...

Tags:

I have argued, as have others, that the distinctive nature of Christianity (and for that matter Judaism) is that God teaches mankind through real, historical facts. God says to Moses that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,...

Tags:

Those who follow me on Facebook have already been seeing advertisements for this conference repeatedly, but just in case I have some readers who would be interested who don't do Facebook... In a little less than two weeks, September 21-22,...

Tags:

Recently at his blog, eminent NT scholar Craig Keener published a post stating that Christians should not "attack" the minimal facts argument for the resurrection. Given that I have written quite a bit on this subject and had a webinar...

Tags:

In a few days, on May 19, the Unbelievable radio show will be releasing a podcast of my dialogue with Craig A. Evans on the historicity of John's Gospel. I have not yet heard that podcast myself. Due to some...

Tags:

Yesterday a podcast came out in which Dr. William Lane Craig answers some of my comments elsewhere (most recently here) about various of his views. I think this is a very useful discussion, and I think that in responding to...

Tags:

I've written at length about the problems with "literary device" theories concerning the gospels, theories stating that the gospel authors had a broad license to alter and expand Jesus' words, change facts surrounding incidents, and even invent whole incidents and...

Tags:

This Saturday, April 7, I will be doing a webinar called "Minimal Facts vs. Maximal Data" for Apologetics Academy, beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. The Zoom Room will open at 2 p.m. Go here to join the meeting at...

Tags:

I recently ran across a discussion on Reasonable Faith from 2015 that represents, I'm sorry to say, some of the most problematic tendencies in presenting a minimal facts argument for the resurrection of Jesus and the truth of Christianity. I...

Tags:

C.S. Lewis, writing about New Testament criticism, says, "[R]eflection on the extreme improbability of his own life--by historical standards--seems to me a profitable exercise for everyone. It encourages a due agnosticism." ("Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," in Christian Reflections, p....

Tags:

Recently New Testament scholar Michael Licona has been doing a written debate with Bart Ehrman. Links to their entire back-and-forth can be found here. In the course of that discussion, Ehrman argues that the infancy accounts in Matthew and Luke...

Tags:

Some months ago I wrote this post on the theories of New Testament scholar and apologist Michael Licona. Since then I've gathered some more material, some of it from his very large, earlier book The Resurrection of Jesus, which I...

Tags:

Dr. Michael Licona is an apologist and New Testament scholar who shook up the evangelical world several years ago by simultaneously claiming to be an Biblical inerrantist and stating that Matthew added the short passage about the opening of the...

Tags:

It's been a long time since we've had an apologetics post. I have a whole list of bad news items that I have thought of writing about under the all-too-apt heading of What's Wrong With the World, but instead, I've...

Tags:

I have a new post up at my personal blog. It's a followup to an informal radio debate recorded between Bart Ehrman and my husband, Tim. To be more precise, it is a followup to part I of that debate....

Tags:

An excellent set of quotations taken from 19th-century lawyer Edmund Bennett, The Four Gospels From a Lawyer's Standpoint (1899) Is the story of Barabbas a myth, merely because one evangelist (John) says he was a robber, and two others (Mark...

Tags:

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was asked by a correspondent to read some material from the now-archived site Common Sense Atheism and give my opinions. One motif I found that surprised me (though it shouldn't have surprised...

Tags:

I often identify myself as an evidentialist in the realm of religious knowledge. I find, however, that there are some misconceptions floating about as to what evidentialism is or entails. Herewith, some hopefully useful clarifications. 1) Evidentialism is not the...

Tags:

For the present let it suffice to bear in mind that there is no limit to the strength of working, as distinguished from abstract, certainty, to which probable evidence may not lead us along its gently ascending paths. W.E. Gladstone,...

Tags:

I've begun lately reading the Horae Paulinae by 18th century apologist William Paley. One of the gems of Christian apologetics, the Horae Paulinae should be much more widely known and widely read. It is eminently readable; I'm finding it...

Tags:

Okay, chaps, the world is darned depressing and frightening for us traditionalists and Christians, and even just for sane and sensible people, and instead of blogging about Bob Woodward, which I momentarily feared I had a duty to do, I'm...

Tags:

I've accumulated several things to note which require little comment but which readers may find interesting, so I've decided to put these heterogenous elements into a post together. Item 1: The last lecture in the apologetics series by Timothy McGrew,...

Tags:

I have already posted information about how readers can listen (here) to a talk by my husband, Tim McGrew, on undesigned coincidences in the Gospels. That talk was given at First Baptist Church of Kenner, LA (New Orleans area) in...

Tags:

Here is an exceedingly interesting talk by Esteemed Husband, given in New Orleans last Sunday, on undesigned coincidences in the Gospels. This is an argument that was well-known in the nineteenth century but has, for no really clear reason, simply...

Tags:

For a limited time only (get yours while supplies last) a draft is available on my personal web site of "History and Theism: Epistemology, Miracles, and the God Who Speaks." This article will eventually appear in a forthcoming Routledge Companion...

Tags:

I'm pleased to announce that an annotated bibliography of apologetics works from the late 17th through the 19th centuries is now available here. It contains links to the works in question, available in the public domain. It is entirely the...